Conversely, liberals (and to a lesser extent the contemporary Left), don't appreciate this 'collective will' conception of democracy, and are rarely able to articulate a common purpose/vision that can unify the country. Which is why they are generally bad at 'metanarrative' https://twitter.com/AsimAli6/status/1322639469229580295

compared to the Right. In India, on one side, the Right can unite most people (except Muslims) on the uplifting vision of Hindutva/aggressive nationalism/strong nation. There is no comparable rousing vision on the other side. Most ordinary people if not averse are pretty meh to

the pre-2014 liberal secular version of India, so a call to status quo ante can hardly form an appealing common purpose. During the heyday, the Congress did have such a vision- Nehru could unite the country on rapidly building a free India on socialist lines, Indira had the

powerful common purpose of abolishing poverty, Rajiv embodied the vision of a young restless India leaping confidently forth into the age of technology. There is no similarly rousing common version on the side opposing the toxic (but intoxicating) vision on the other side.

For instance, this is obviously RW nonsense, but it is instructive because a lot of ordinary people can and do share some of this belief. It is obviously important to focus on gender, class, caste, religious inequality, but you also need an enveloping

https://mobile.twitter.com/GappistanRadio/status/1322540122177445890

vision on what can unite everyone. This is also behind some of the crisis of American liberalism where the some of the grounding concepts like the 'American dream' and 'American exceptionalism' (or even the Cold War battle for democracy) have lost much of their popular appeal.

The financial crisis and war on Iraq exposed to the people how hollow these ideals were, and even though Obama did manage to resuscitate some of this liberal idealism ('the arc of American history' etc), by the end of his second term, even that was gone. Identity politics has now

almost completely monopolised the space of American liberalism (if only because there are no credible alternatives left). But identity politics (though a good thing) can never provide that unifying common purpose that undergirds the 'collective will' conception of democracy.

Which is why Biden (because to win an election he needs a majority) has run an almost completely visionless, ideology-less campaign. To win, as it were, by default (on account of the opponent). Because an ideological campaign on identity politics would have certainly meant a loss